


Blanket Forts and Cups of Tea

by sunsetmog



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Stupid Arguments, teaspoons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 20:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is knobhead the password?” </p><p>“No.”</p><p>Or, the one where Louis builds a blanket fort and Nick gets upset about teaspoons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blanket Forts and Cups of Tea

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Чашки чая, шалаши из покрывал](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6457759) by [AvaDay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaDay/pseuds/AvaDay)



> This was a co-write with **poppletarts** (who doesn't have an ao3) and was originally posted on Tumblr, [here](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/post/120793701683/ficlet-blanket-forts-and-cups-of-tea-louis-nick). It stayed with us, so we're putting it up on ao3 too. <3

The fight doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere—Nick has been slowly gathering steam on this for weeks and weeks now, ever since Louis started treating Nick’s place like his own, up to and including his annoying, untidy habits like leaving the milk out and leaving teaspoons anywhere in the flat that isn’t the sink or the dishwasher.

The straw that breaks the camel’s back comes in the form of single, hot chocolate-covered teaspoon on the edge of the sink in Nick’s bathroom, discovered at five in the morning after a shit night’s sleep because Louis kept fucking kicking him.

“What the fuck,” Nick says. “ _Louis_.”

“It’s in the sink,” Louis says smugly, from where he’s curled up in Nick’s bed because he doesn’t have to get up at the arse-end of the night to go and entertain the nation. “What are you complaining about?”

“Oh my god, are you a total idiot? Are you this annoying on purpose?” Nick asks, and it escalates from there.

By the time he gets home from work, he’s stewed in his tired frustration for a good twelve hours, and he’s ready to let rip. He storms into the house and into the living room, only to find every pillow and blanket he owns collected in the living room, a fort constructed across his furniture , and Louis refusing to come out.

“Louis—”

“You’ll need the password before I’ll talk to you,” Louis says, from inside the fort.

“Just let me in, for god’s sake.” The fort entrance is fastened closed with safety pins.

“Password,” Louis says, and that’s all he’ll say to Nick. 

Nick hates being ignored.

After a few minutes the spout of the kettle pokes out from the corner of the fort, and starts to boil.

Nick is incensed. “You’ve stolen the kettle. You knob.”

“No, Nick, the password is not knob.”

“Bacon?”

There’s a pause. “…Bacon? Or baker?”

“Bacon.”

“No.”

“Baker?”

“No.”

“God damn it, Tomlinson.” Nick clenches his fists, and then lets them go, trying to find his peaceful centre. Only Louis can drive him this mad. He lets out a breath. “I don’t know why you don’t just put your teaspoons somewhere actually sensible.”

“The counter is sensible, Nicholas, stop being a gigantic knobhead.”

“Is knobhead the password?”

“No.”

Nick pauses. “Is there enough water in that kettle for me?”

“No.”

“I’ll bring my own mug.”

Louis waits a moment before replying. “You may pass a mug through,” he finally says. “But you may not enter.”

“It’s my flat,” Nick says desperately. “It’s my kettle, and those are my cushions.”

“Now they’re mine,” Louis says, “so shut up.”

Nick gets a mug and pokes it through a hole in the blankets. A couple of minutes later, a cup of tea is poked back through the gap.

The bastard’s had Nick’s milk out of the fridge.

Nick takes a breath.

A little while later, when Nick is sitting on the cushion-less couch and playing _What Makes You Beautiful_ over and over again - quite loudly - the doorbell goes.

“That’s my takeaway,” Louis says, and he pushes his wallet out through a fort flap. “Would you be a love, Nicholas?”

Nick dumps Daddies Sauce all over Louis’s curry and steals all the money out of his wallet.

“I hate you,” Louis says, from inside the blankets, once Nick’s poked his takeaway through the gap. “I was going to blow you later and everything.”

“That could still happen,” Nick says. “Do you want some mango chutney?”

“No. I want my curry.”

“You have your curry,” Nick says. He thinks very seriously about letting Pig tear down Louis’s fort, then realises he hasn’t seen Pig since he got home. “Lou. Have you got my dog in there?”

Louis doesn’t answer, but four seconds later, Nick’s phone sounds a text message, and he pulls up a picture of Pig curled up on a pile of pillows, grinning.

“I just wanted you to put your teaspoons somewhere sensible,” Nick says, a little frustratedly. “Now you’ve stolen my dog.”

“She came in willingly, and I put it on the counter because I’m going to use it again.”

“Not the one in the bathroom you weren’t. And anyway, I have more than one teaspoon. You can just -”

“The walls of the fort are impervious, Nick. I can’t hear you.”

Nick slumps in his seat. “Louis–”

“No,” Louis says. “I can’t hear you.”

“Fine,” Nick says, and he stomps off into the bedroom and slams the door. “Keep my dog, then.”

There are no sheets on his bed, and no pillows.

He sits in the bath instead, and sulks.

After a bit, Louis knocks awkwardly at the door. “You can have your dog back.”

“Where is she?”

Louis makes a shrugging kind of a noise. “Still in the fort.”

“She obviously prefers you,” Nick says. “You may as well keep her.” He feels very sorry for himself.

“You could join us in the fort,” Louis says. “I ordered more food.”

“I don’t know the password,” Nick says, hugging the bath pillow to his chest. He doesn’t like being left out. Pig and Louis know the password. “You told my dog but you wouldn’t tell me.”

There’s a pause. “I could tell you the password.”

Nick hugs his pillow tighter. It’s still a bit damp. It’s kind of revolting. “You’d change it before I came in.”

“The password only changes at midnight, Nick. Everyone knows that.”

“You took my kettle. And you took my dog.”

“Want a kiss?”

Nick does. He shrugs. Louis can't see that through the closed door.

“Nicholas. Do you need me to come in there?”

“You leave the teaspoons everywhere,” Nick says. “We have a dishwasher. And a sink.”

There was a long, long pause. “We do, do we?” Louis says.

Nick shrugs again. This is his flat. “Might do.”

“Right,” Louis says. “I’ll put the teaspoons somewhere nearer to _our_ dishwasher, okay? Now come and hug your dog. She’s pining.”

“I still don’t know the password.”

“It’s Britney, Nicholas. Come and hug your dog and eat some of these biscuits.”

Nick waits another three minutes before he crawls out of the bath and goes back down the hall into the living room. He knocks on the wall of the fort.

“Password,” Louis says, from inside.

“Britney,” Nick says.

Louis holds the flap open. “No shoes in the fort. My boyfriend will be really angry if you get dirt on his blankets.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Nick says. “I wouldn’t want to piss off your boyfriend. He sounds pretty fierce.”

“He is,” Louis says. “He’s hot too. Obsessed with fucking teaspoons, though.”

“I’d indulge him if I were you. Everyone’s got a flaw.”

“Excellent advice,” Louis says. “Are you coming in, or what?”

“Suppose so,” Nick says, and he ducks down so he can crawl into the fort.

It’s nice in here. Cosy. It ought to be, seeing as Louis has stolen every blanket, cushion, duvet, and pillow in the whole flat. Nick plops himself down and Pig looks up from her bed.

“C'mere,” he says, patting his lap. “Come here, darling.”

He shouldn’t be as surprised as he is when Louis sneaks into his lap first.

Nick looks up, and feels the ghost of a smile cross his face. “Hello, darling.”

“Hello,” Louis says. He rubs the tip of his nose down the bridge of Nick’s. “I made a fort.”

“I know. It’s nice.”

“I like it. I might sleep here.”

“Can’t sleep in our bed,” Nick says. “We’ve got no pillows on it.”

“Our pillows are very comfortable,” Louis says. “Fort’s better with them in it.” He rubs his nose against Nick’s again. “Sorry about the teaspoons. I don’t do it on purpose.”

“Sorry for being a pain about the teaspoons,” Nick says. “I didn’t mean to be this much of a dick about them.”

Louis makes a stupid face, the kind he makes when he’s asked for a photo.

“You’re very pretty, I agree,” Nick says, and Louis laughs then, curling his hands into Nick’s hair.

“I know,” Louis says. “You going to kiss me, or what?”

“I was waiting for an invitation,” Nick says, sliding his hands into the hollow of Louis’s back.

“Consider yourself invited,” Louis says softly, and Nick tilts his chin up and touches his mouth to Louis’s.

Louis grins against his mouth, and kisses him back.

~*~

They sleep in the fort, Pig curled up by their feet. She snores louder than both of them. They put up with it.

**Author's Note:**

> sunsetmog: [twitter](https://twitter.com/sunsetmog) // [tumblr](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/)  
> poppletarts: [tumblr](http://poppletarts.tumblr.com/)


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